What was once the company's slowest month is now the biggest at Mountain Sun's four area brewpubs — Mountain and Southern Sun Pub & Breweries and Under the Sun Eatery and Taphouse in Boulder, and Vine Street Pub and Brewery in Denver.

Stouts don't crack the list of top-selling beer styles, but they have a devoted following. Mountain Sun managing partner Paul Nashak attributes the attraction to the few limits on what you can do with stouts.

"The craft-beer industry is heavily centered on entrepreneurs — so many people in second and third careers who got into it because they simply loved beer," he said. "If you bring people together with that mindset, there is a greater chance of creativity and doing something new. The market loves that. The market gobbles it up."

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With so many choices, we asked Nashak to identify some of the most popular Mountain Sun house stouts.

Among them: Girl Scout Stout, which grew out a home-brew competition and "tastes like a Thin Mint;" the oatmeal stout Yonder Mountain; a Belgian coffee collaboration with Odell Brewing making a second appearance this year; Nihilist, an award-winning imperial stout; and "Trickster Stout," an unorthodox hopped-up stout.

You can embrace your dark side all month. Coming up: the release of that Odell collaboration on Feb. 21 and, on Feb. 25, the release of the winner of this year's Stout Month homebrew competition.

Eye left Dry Dock Brewing in Aurora to start Prost with five business partners, betting the drinking public would warm to lower-alcohol, flavorful German beers served in authentic glassware in a tasting room full of wooden benches and old-world character.

Prost co-owner Kevin Sheesley said Eye's resignation will not affect the brewery's direction.

"We're going to move on, same way we've been going," he said. "We're just going to keep making great beer and keep going."

Eye's departure was preceded by the exit of Prost lead brewer Ashleigh Carter, who joined Eye when the brewery opened. Carter said she plans to open her own brewery crafting German lagers.

"I love making German beers, and it's a good opportunity to do it the way you want to, 100 percent from top to bottom and not be under anyone's thumb, per se," she said.

The brewery tap room, in a former medical-marijuana dispensary at 1290 S. Broadway, celebrated its grand opening Friday

Owner and head brewer James Howat is a microbiologist and longtime homebrewer. His wife, Sarah, handles the marketing.

The idea behind Former Future is to take historical recipes and styles and reconstruct them with modern twists and experimental techniques.

Take the English IPA: It has a 100 percent English grain bill as close as possible to what it would have looked like in the 1880s, James Howat said. But the English hops are incorporated in an American style, with less harsh bitterness and more floral hop aroma, he said.

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